Bravo Mr Greenwald, as usual, from a European admirer

But one’s own actions may certainly encourage them, as I think you go on to admit: “more and more Muslims are turning to religious radicalism. Israel knows this story only too well because it helped create it”. If there is one common quality shared by Israel and the United States, as the rest of the world sees it, it’s a sort of national infantilism where it’s always someone else’s fault without a glimmer of self-examination. Americans wander around Europe piteously complaining that no-one likes them without bothering to lower their voices to complain about anything that doesn’t suit or flatter them while declining to understand whatever they’re trampling over because it’s not what they’re used to “at home”. At best, they’re a subject of near-universal mockery; at worst they’re genuinely ill-treated and robbed on the principle that it serves them right. The greater part of the world despises or hates Americans, not because they’re all necessarily bad, but because to ordinary eyes they mostly appear so stupid, uncivilised and insensitive. And one may also ask, since generally mild national or ‘racist’ antipathies are as old as time, why the bloated expression ‘anti-Semitic’ or even anti-American should apparently carry more significance than, say anti-Arabism or anti-anything else. If naïve and self-righteous feelings are expressed with too much vain conviction it’s hardly surprising that they might be returned, and yes, with vengeance.

Sympathies for being so unfortunate as to have tangled with that arch-villain, yet many of us, probably, have had to put up with seeing money not exactly wrongfully or unscrupulously gained disappear thanks to the machinations of individuals who in other circumstances would deserve to be hung. Since there's nothing else to be done and there's no point in crying over spilt milk, perhaps it's the occasion to recollect two very important principles: one, that ursury is a sin even if committed at sec0nd hand; and secondly that desire is the cause of all unhappiness.

Cold comfort I'm afraid .....

That's pretty modest. I occasionally get something off the street for a euro or two from the gypsies, who've very conveniently nicked it from somewhere else. Then there's always friends who out-grow or discard theirs. It's possible to cover one's body decently enough, or even quite stylishly, for hardly anything. But you're right about the quality. I never see anything I'd want to buy even if I could and so the cheapest is the only sensible thing to do. However, this extremely 'frugal' wardrobe contains, for example:

a tweed overcoat c 1940, warm as toast, hand-stiched silk- lined and set to last for another hundred years with an additional stitch here and there from time to time;

a cream silk tuxedo c 1950, a bit grubby but still impressive with jeans;

a hand made Madras cotton summer shirt 1965;

a pair of English brogues 1972, extremely comfortable;

an American nylon street jacket 1974 and a Portuguese shepherd's cape with fox fur collar 1979, both currently in heavy use. Etc.

Who needs all this over-priced fake rubbish?

You don't mean BEFORE WW2???

What a load of fuss and indignation and irrelevant moralizing over nothing! Everyone is made differently, hardly anyone is born physically faultless, most of us want to be some other way, but how we choose to live is our own business whatever we look like. If a person wishes to make him- or herself gross through foolish eating and slovenly habits let them get on with it and take the consequences; there’s no indication that the present writer is one of those ...

I’ve known for twenty years a girl – woman I suppose I should say – who was as ‘big’ then as now. She has legs and arms like tree-trunks and the rest is proportionate. She hardly eats anything. Naturally she used to be upset at being ‘passed over’ by potential admirers in favour of more conventionally-shaped girls, and she even became rather belligerent towards the opposite sex for that reason; quite wrongly, no-one can help their sexual preferences either. It’s no good saying she’d be run off her feet in Polynesia because that’s not where she happens to be. A man of average size and weight has been devoted to her for as long as I’ve known them, and they have a daughter who exactly resembles her mother except that a good model will save her a lot of the unnecessary distress endured by the parent.

The woman I’m describing has the flawless skin of a magnolia petal and hair so beautiful that a hair-dresser’s attention would desecrate it, attributes that most women would give their eye-teeth for. She has no need for cosmetics of any sort. She certainly doesn’t smell. She favours a somewhat eccentric manner of dress - that is, she doesn’t follow ‘fashions’ – which doesn’t so much disguise her figure as make it striking and distinctive and draws attention to a formidable and intelligent character that makes the best of what God has allotted her instead of weeping and claiming sympathy for what she doesn’t have. Her size gives her one other advantage I might add: she's not incapable of administering a salutory punch in the jaw, metaphysically or otherwise, to anyone who makes any rude comments or offers impertinent advice....